Obama administration officials say they forcibly removed a record number of people last year, some 396,906 in all, including 216,698 criminal immigrants, or about 55% of the total.

ICE has removed 127,044 criminal illegal immigrants this fiscal year, officials said. That is behind last year's rate by approximately 12,000, or 9%.

As usual, ICE insider Chris Crane exposes the behinds the scenes desparation in the Regime over the declining numbers:

Some ICE agents condemned the latest plan as politically inspired, rather than a more efficient use of resources.

"Our officers in the field are being told by senior-level managers that this is politically motivated to bump up the numbers during an election year for the Obama administration," said Chris Crane, president of the National ICE Council, a union that represents approximately 7,300 ICE employees.

"During this administration, every year we are restricted from doing our jobs during the year and then at the end of the fiscal year we have to pull some kind of stunt to pull our numbers back up," said Crane.

The Regime just wants it both ways, a record number of deported criminal aliens, but it also extends the same amnesty to criminal aliens available to run-of-the-mill illegal aliens. But it appears that criminal aliens are winning that half-hearted battle.